Dispatch from Turkey

I spent the last couple of weeks on vacation in Turkey, before, during and after President Obama's visit. They love him there and the fact that he came as part of a larger trip to Europe--as opposed to the Middle East--was seen as symbolically a very big deal. The visit included a Q&A session with local university students, which seems to have gone well (video here):

Answering questions from Turkish university students at the historic Tophane-i Amire Hall in Istanbul at a session titled "Live and Online Discussion with President Obama" yesterday, Obama did nothing but solidify that image. At the end of the session, Obama took time to shake hands with the majority of the students, a scene a million miles from the previous U.S. president's visit to Turkey. A few seconds before George W. Bush was shaking hands with the guests at the Galatasaray University in June 2004, his bodyguards were checking their palms for weapons.

Obama was not only different than Bush, but also different from most politicians the students knew. "This attitude is not something a Turk is used to," said Denizcan Demirkılıç, who studies law at the Bahçeşehir University. "How many of the students in this hall ever got to sit this close to a politician? You can stand 30 or 40 centimeters from the president of one of the greatest countries of the world, you ask him questions and shake hands with him. Our politicians have a lot to learn from that."

Demirkılıç was one of the 99 students who were selected for the session, mainly due to their previous participation in programs at U.S.-related institutions or had spent a year in the United States on exchange programs. Most of the students were informed about the possibility of a conference a few weeks ago and last week received calls confirming their attendance. There was no further preparation for them, and as one of Obama's assistants announced prior to the Q&A session, there were "no rules and no restrictions" on what they could ask, as affirmed by students afterward.

Ece Başaran from the Bahçeşehir University was in the United States during Obama's presidential election campaign. Başaran said she was impressed by the president's honesty. "He is very charismatic and honest," she said. "I was in America during the campaign, and he continues to say what he was saying then. There is not a change in his stance. He knows how to touch critical points, but he does it in a certain way that he doesn't hurt you.

In one sense diplomacy is a formal process by which officials representing sovereign nations negotiate over matters of mutual interest, but there's also a lot to be said for simply treating people well and understanding how they see themselves. President Bush liked to refer to Turkey as a "moderate Islamic country," which cuts against Turkey's identity as a nation founded on secular principles. It's true that the vast majority of Turks identify themselves as Muslim, but lots of countries are religously homogenous and nobody calls Finland a "liberal Lutheran country."

Which is not to say that the tension between secular and religous ideals isn't real. Turkey is, famously, the land where the forces of religon, geography, politics, and culture intersect and sometimes collide. We spent our first night on the Gallipoli penninsula in a small hotel built in the village of Kocadere (Number of residents: 23. Percent of residents working in small-scale agriculture: 100). But even that tiniest of population centers has two distinct features: A mosque complete with a blue and white minaret from which prayers are broadcast five times a day, and a small municipal building in front of which stands a flagpole waving a crisp Turkish flag, as well as a polished bust of Mustafa Kemal, hero of the Gallipoli campaign and father of the nation. 

Turkey is also a good place to see where a lot of the fantastic items of antiquity in European museums and capitals used to be before they were stolen or otherwise acquired. The Pergamon museum in Berlin, for example, is a great place to visit, but I suspect its dramatic marbles of gods and monsters would look even better if they still sat on the original site of Alexander the Great's perfect city, looming over the valleys near the Aegean Sea. Same thing with the bronze horses of St. Mark's in Venice, stolen from the Hippodrome when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. (Well-travelled animals, those horses--how many other objects have been appropriated by both Nero and Napoleon?) It makes you wonder why, exactly, the word "crusade" continues to enjoy such positive connotations. 

Driving down the Aegean coast is a lot like spending several days inside one of those Poussin landscapes you study in Art History 101. The metaphors are so obvious and strong that you can't help but indulge in a lot of highly cliched reflection on the breadth and cyclical nature of history, civilizations rising and falling and leaving only their bones behind, etc.. No sooner had we climbed up to the ruined temple of Athena in Priene when an honest-to-goodness goatherd drove his flock up around the scattered pieces of Ionic column and through the 2,000-year old mountainside theater. Touristically speaking, it was awesome--they should really charge extra for that kind of thing. 

Same thing with Istanbul, where you can stand on top of the Theodosian walls and under the dome of the Hagia Sophia (where a prostitute is supposed to have danced on the altar during the sack; seriously, what was up with those Crusaders?). President Obama was there last week, and at the Blue Mosque nearby, apt locations for a Christian born of a Muslim father to talk about a better future for people of all faiths.